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mk · 3498 days ago · link · · parent · post: Zimbabwe offers new exchange rate: $1 for 35,000,000,000,000,000 old dollars
Inflation is such a fascinating example of the psychological basis for currency, and how it can crumble. If prices are rising two fold per day, it's obvious that anything earned today will be worthless in a couple of weeks time. Yet people still go through the motions of exchanging something of symbolic 'value', however transient that symbolic value might be. Reading 'One Hundred Trillion Dollars' is comical, and yet these bills are printed despite the fact that the paper and ink expended is going to exceed the symbolic value shortly thereafter.